The archive for Art Trujillo's award-winning column

Monthly Archives: June 2005

Returning Sunday from the wedding of our youngest son, we drove into our yard to discover we’d missed witnessing one hail of a storm. Interestingly, no other house at Camp Luna got pelted. Meteorologists are still marveling at the fact that the storm centered solely over our property, wrecking the siding on the south wall and causing the roof to our fairly new house to need replacement.

Some common events connect thousands of citizens of Las Vegas and the surrounding area . . . We thought he was overly critical of our efforts. “He” is a customer, a reader who noticed a particularly egregious error in a photo caption in Wednesday’s Optic.
We make mistakes (do we ever!) and it’s a sign of responsibility to admit them without belaboring them. Though all of us in the newsroom may have a different way of handling making corrections, my advice is not to resurrect the error.

Because I’m addicted to the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, inertia usually precludes my switching channels when he signs off.
Just like tonight. The program that follows Jay Leno, “Just Shoot Me,” with David (I’m not funny without my former partner Chris Farley) Spade, uses dialogue consisting of sophomoric humor that deals with 1) toilet humor, 2) parts of the anatomy, 3) sexual innuendo. The entire show consists of suggestive exchanges all designed to persuade the other — sometimes a virtual stranger — to bed down.

One of the pleasures of writing “Work of Art” comes in feedback I receive periodically.
Many have commented on the frequent “growing up” pieces, claiming, “That girl you described at a dance could’ve been me.” or “I too remember when it was safe to leave my bike out all night. Nobody would ever steal it.” Monday, Al Valdez explained that a previous column, “must’ve been written about me.” I didn’t recall having written anything particular about Valdez, the long-time manager of Gambles. He explained that much I had written on how Vegas youths used to earn money could have applied to him.

A few days away from Father’s Day, I decided to take inventory, to comment on the phenomenon of fatherhood.
What do I have in common with other fathers and grandfathers? I believe that too often our meddling, our trying help our children embarrasses them. Don’t all children grow to an age in which their parents become idiots? And don’t most teens eventually become 20-something men and women who are amazed at how much their parents had learned in just a few years?